Sequestration costs Moberly Head Start one classroom

Thursday

Jun 27, 2013 at 2:27 PMJun 28, 2013 at 10:41 AM

Drew Van DykeMMI Editor

A quarter of a million dollars in budget cuts due to March 1's sequestration have left local Head Start programs, including the one in Moberly, searching for ways to provide similar services with lesser staff and resources.

"We are a federally-funded [entity]," Linda Bleything, Head Start Director with Douglass Community Services, Inc. (the group that the Moberly program goes through), confirmed to the MMI Tuesday (June 25).

Due to the guidelines set for the Head Start program, locally, their cuts "have to come from staff," Bleything said.

"In Moberly, we only had to cut one classroom that had 20 children in it," she noted. "We will be able to provide home-based services to some of those children; [but] about 12 children will lose services."

Moberly's enrollment drop will only be in the Head Start program, Bleything said — the group made up of children ages three through five years of age — and not in the Early Head Start program — birth through age three.

In accordance with numbers provided by DCS following the cuts, the group will be forced "to eliminate 18 staff positions and services to 77 children in its Early Head Start and Head Start programs."

That cut represents 14 percent of Head Start's work force, and will culminate in a 14-percent drop in fall enrollment for the upcoming school year.

Following the cuts, Bleything said the Moberly Head Start office will serve approximately 82 children — between 78 and 80 families, as some have multiple children enlisted in the program.

One of their part-day classrooms will become a full-day/part-day mix.

"That second classroom will first fill with full-day children, then will fill with part-time children," Bleything explained.

"We regret how these reductions will impact our communities," Dave Dexheimer, Executive Director at DCS said, in a prepared statement. "Not only will this add to unemployment through the loss of staff; it may mean parents will also have to give up work because they cannot afford child care. While we now that cuts must be made in the federal budget, it is unfortunate that across the board cuts to all federal programs [have] taken place. It is our hope that Congress will soon lay out the budget for the upcoming year that might replace some of these reductions to programs such as Head Start, which contribute not only to economic growth, but provide a valuable "head start" to so many pre-schoolers, thus enabling them to further contribute to the future growth of our economy, our culture, out nation."

"We've been on a fixed budget for 10 years," Bleything said. "In 2009, we did get some additional money for Early Head Start. [But other than that] there have been no budget increases."

The DCS release notes that "Head Start and Early Head Start provide a full range of child development services for low-income children, ages birth to five, providing not only kindergarten readiness, but also services to ensure children are getting their health, dental, nutrition, and socialization needs met."

Recruitment is a big part of how children are brought into the program, Bleything said. They take applications, and priority is given to those with income well below the federal poverty level (100 percent, she said, being less than $23,050 brought in annually for a family of four), to those who are homeless, and to those with children with disabilities.

"We work just as much with the families," Bleything said. "When the child enrolls, the family enrolls."